The eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey (eFEDS): Identification and characterization of the counterparts to the point-like sources

TL;DR

This paper details the identification and characterization of X-ray source counterparts from the eROSITA eFEDS survey, providing a comprehensive multi-wavelength catalog with redshifts, crucial for understanding the X-ray emitting populations.

Contribution

It introduces a combined method for identifying counterparts to eROSITA X-ray sources and releases a large multi-wavelength catalog with redshifts, enhancing the understanding of X-ray source populations.

Findings

90.5% of sources have reliable counterparts

Over 24,700 sources with multi-wavelength properties and redshifts

High identification success rate in the eFEDS survey

Abstract

In November 2019, eROSITA on board of SRG observatory started to map the entire sky in X-rays. After the 4-year survey program, it will reach flux limits about 25 times deeper than ROSAT. During the SRG Performance Verification phase, eROSITA observed a contiguous 140 deg$^2$ area of the sky down to the final depth of the eROSITA all-sky survey ("eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey": eFEDS), with the goal of obtaining a census of the X-ray emitting populations (stars, compact objects, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, AGN) that will be discovered over the entire sky. This paper presents the identification of the counterparts to the point-sources detected in eFEDS in the Main and Hard samples described in Brunner et al 2021, and their multi-wavelength properties, including redshift. For the identification of the counterparts we combined the results from two independent methods (NWAY and ASTROMATCH), trained on the multi-wavelength properties of a sample of 23k XMM-Newton sources detected in the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey DR8. Then spectroscopic redshifts and photometry from ancillary surveys are collated for the computation of photometric redshifts. The eFEDS sources with a reliable counterparts are 24774/27369 (90.5\%) in the Main sample and 231/246 (93.9\%) in the Hard sample, including 2514 (3) sources for which a second counterpart is equally likely. [abridged] This paper is accompanying the eROSITA early data release of all the observations performed during the performance and verification phase. Together with the catalogs of primary and secondary counterparts to the Main and Hard samples of the eFEDS survey this paper releases their multi-wavelength properties and redshifts.